Mammalian

How to spell mammalian

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce mammalian

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does mammalian mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to or characteristic of mammals, the class of animals whose females feed their young with milk.

Mammalian in a sentence

• The lecture compared reptilian and mammalian patterns of body temperature.

• Whales share the same mammalian traits as land animals, including lungs and milk glands.

Where does mammalian come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin mamma, which simply meant 'breast' and was also the affectionate word a Roman child used for mother, much like the modern 'mama'. In the eighteenth century the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus coined the scientific Latin term Mammalia to name the class of animals defined by the fact that the females feed their young with milk from mammary glands. English then formed 'mammalian' as the adjective belonging to that class, layering the suffix -al onto the root and adding -ian to mean 'relating to'. The doubled m in the middle is the chief spelling trap, and it survives directly from the Latin mamma, where both consonants were already present. The same root sits inside everyday words like 'mammary' and the medical 'mammogram', which can help anchor the spelling.

How the word is built

• mamm- (from Latin mamma: breast)
• -al (adjective suffix)
• -ian (relating to)